The Life of a Bucking Bull

By: TG Maywald

When I began writing Bodacious: Master of Disaster, I did not set out to investigate the welfare of bucking bulls.

I was not looking for evidence to defend the sport, nor did I begin with an accusation against it. The truth is much simpler: I did not know enough to have a firm opinion one way or the other.

I knew the eight seconds the public sees—the gate opening, the explosion into the arena, and the contest between a man determined to stay aboard and an animal equally determined to put him on the ground. I knew far less about everything that happens before the gate opens and after the bull disappears behind it.

Over the years I have spent researching Bodacious, I have followed bucking bulls from pasture to trailer, through the back pens and into the chutes, then watched them return to the pens when their work was finished. I have listened to stock contractors describe feeding programs, transportation, injuries, breeding decisions, retirement, and the individual habits of bulls they have known for years.

What I discovered was not simply that these animals are cared for.

It was how deeply they are known.

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association began adopting rules for the care and treatment of rodeo livestock in 1947. Those regulations govern transportation, facilities, feed and water, veterinary care, equipment, and how often an animal may perform.

Under the PRCA rules included in its veterinary guide, livestock cannot remain confined or in transit for more than twenty-four hours without being unloaded, properly fed, and watered. Animals are inspected before they are placed in the draw, and any animal that is sore, lame, sick, injured, visually impaired, or otherwise unfit cannot compete.

A veterinarian must be present for every rodeo performance and section of slack. Arenas and holding areas are checked for unsafe footing, exposed wire, sharp metal, or other hazards. Equipment is regulated. Bull riders cannot use sharp spurs, and a bull’s flank strap must be a soft cotton rope with no sharp or cutting objects.

Those rules matter. They create standards and accountability. But rules can tell us only so much.

They can require clean water. They cannot explain what it means for a man to recognize a bull’s mood by the movement of one ear.

Sammy Andrews could do that with Bodacious.

When Bodacious stood in the chute, Sammy watched his ears. If a rider climbed aboard, settled his rope, and nodded for the gate, Bodacious generally waited for the work to begin. But if the rider took too long, one of his ears would begin to twitch.

Sammy knew what that meant.

Bodacious did not like people wasting his time, and the bull rider sitting above him was probably fixing to have a particularly bad day.

It is a small detail, but it says something important about the relationship between stock contractors and their animals. Sammy did not merely know how Bodacious looked or bucked. He knew the nearly imperceptible signals that revealed his temperament. He knew when Bodacious was relaxed, when he was impatient, and when trouble was gathering beneath a cowboy.

Stock contractors spend years learning the personalities and peculiarities of these animals much as the rest of us know the dogs sleeping beside our beds. The bulls know them in return.

Phil Sumner owned Bodacious before Sammy did, when the bull was still J-31 and few people understood what he would become. I cannot remember a conversation with Phil in which he did not eventually begin to choke up while talking about him. More than three decades have passed since Bodacious left Phil’s place. The emotion has not.

Ty Murray once told me, “No stock contractor gets into the business for the money.”

A great bucking bull can be extraordinarily valuable, but there is no guarantee that any young bull will become great. By the time a contractor discovers what he has, there have already been years of feed, land, veterinary care, transportation, and daily work. Most bulls will never become Bodacious.

The love these men have for their animals does not always look sentimental. These are cattlemen doing physical work with animals that can weigh close to a ton. Their affection is often expressed through responsibility: noticing that a bull is not eating normally, recognizing a change in the way he travels, knowing which bull needs more room, or checking on one long after everyone else has gone home.

Sometimes, however, the sentiment rises close enough to the surface that it cannot be missed.

In the spring of 1996, Sammy turned Bodacious out with cows. The bull had earned his retirement. He had nothing left to prove and no reason ever to stand beneath another rider.

But when it was time for the other bulls to travel, Bodacious followed the trailer.

Sammy left without him.

He later said he could hear Bodacious bawling all the way to Dallas.

Bodacious did not understand retirement as an honor. He knew only that the trailer had arrived, the other bulls were leaving, and he had been left behind. After years on the road, that routine belonged to him.

The more time I spent around bucking bulls, the more I understood that many of them know when it is time to work. They recognize the activity around the pens, the trailer, and the chute. They are also individuals. Some are calm. Some are impatient. Some are mischievous. Some seem to conserve every ounce of themselves until the gate opens.

They are purpose-bred athletes with a natural, inherited inclination to buck when something is placed on their backs. That genetic ability is why pedigrees matter and why breeders study generations of bloodlines.

The flank strap does not create the instinct. It is a soft rope placed around the bull’s flank that encourages him to extend his hind legs and kick higher. It does not touch his genitals, and it is removed immediately after the out. The desire and ability to buck belong to the bull himself.

Then there is the matter of time.

Eight seconds can feel enormous when Bodacious is underneath you. For the bull, those seconds represent only a tiny fraction of his life. Most riders do not remain aboard until the whistle. Even if every rider did, the total time a bucking bull spends carrying a man throughout his entire career would be measured in minutes.

The rest of his life is pasture and feed, water and shade, cattle around him, and familiar hands.

Bodacious spent his retirement with Sammy. When a hoof infection threatened his life in 1999, Sammy took him to the veterinary hospital at Oklahoma State University, where he remained for nearly a month receiving treatment. They did not stop caring for him when he could no longer compete or earn another championship.

He was still Bodacious.

I began this book expecting stories about wrecks, scores, championships, broken bones, and the men brave enough to nod their heads over the most feared bull in the world. I found all of that.

What I did not expect was the tenderness.

It was there in Phil’s breaking voice, in Sammy’s ability to read the twitch of an ear, and in the weeks spent trying to save a bull whose working days had ended.

The regulations taught me how rodeo animals are required to be treated.

The men taught me how deeply they are loved.

Somewhere near the end of writing Bodacious’s story, I realized that the legendary bond between Sammy Andrews and Bodacious was not unusual because a stock contractor loved his bull.

It was unusual only because the whole world happened to see it.